By Marci Mayer Eisen and Emily Bornstein
What might the impact be if every local Jewish community had a professional association to bring together professionals in order to create a stronger sense
of shared community?
It’s clear from national conversations and numerous articles here on the pages of eJewishPhilanthropy that there has been a shift away from “Jewish communal work” or even “Jewish Nonprofit work” as a long-term career path. Some sadly reflect on this trend as the loss of a profession while others celebrate new opportunities for redefining work in the Jewish community, including the recent announcement of the Hillel Talent Grants. … [Read more...]

By Richard Marker
[Caveat: This post contains both a philanthropy and political point of view.]
Being a funder is a power position. The more money one gives or can give, the more power. Whether that is the way it should be is beside the point.
The NGO/NFP sector is existentially dependent on the largesse and beneficence of those with money. The challenge of how to accept, mitigate, reject the power of those funders is real and all nonprofits understand that. Hopefully, all funders understand that with power comes responsibility.
This power dynamic is the reason that foundations, and the principals and trustees, have certain legal obligations that attempt to bring some equilibrium and an element of fairness to this imbalance. For example, there are limitations on certain related parties … [Read more...]

The experience that an interfaith couple has with Judaism and the Jewish community at the nodal moment of their wedding is critical.
By Edmund Case
The Cohen Center’s new study, Under the Chuppah: Rabbinic Officiation and Intermarriage, is a game-changer. The dominant narrative about intermarriage for twenty-five years has been that interfaith couples are not Jewishly engaged and don’t raise their children as Jews. The many rabbis who don’t officiate at weddings of interfaith couples for that reason no longer have that leg to stand on. The new research shows that interfaith couples who have a rabbi officiate at their weddings do raise their children Jewish - and they join synagogues, too.
I have been focused on the officiation issue since starting InterfaithFamily fifteen years ago. Early … [Read more...]

By Jacob Berkman
This fall, nine Hillel outposts across North America started testing out whether Jewish organizations can become more relevant by developing a radically “user-centric” mindset and then building all of their other institutional priorities, structures and communication in support of that mindset.
These Hillels - from universities large and small, public and private, commuter and residential, and of varying size of staff and budget - are the first cohort of the Campus Leadership Impact (CLI) Platform, an intensive two-year training in the methodology and strategies of Design Thinking.
CLI is the first project launched by the Jewish Design Initiative (JDI), an independent umbrella organization founded by Rabbi Yonah Schiller aimed at developing Design Thinking platforms across … [Read more...]

By Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu
Leaders cannot lead alone. Without a community around them, they would have no one to lead, and no one to turn to for advice. The best leaders seek out places where they can be both challenged and nurtured in order to reach their highest potential. The Rabbis Without Borders Network is a case study which demonstrates how a rich, diverse, challenging, and safe place enables leaders to think, explore, and imagine together, and therefore become more confident, transformative, and relatable leaders.
Rabbis Without Borders (RWB) is a pluralistic network of 200 rabbis who begin their association by being selected to be part of a 20-person cohort. During the cohort year, the rabbis are exposed to a number of different ideas designed to stimulate their own creative thinking … [Read more...]

By Jaime Walman
We hear it all the time; our community bemoans the Millennial generation, painting them with a broad brush stroke of laziness, entitlement and an addiction to technology surpassed only by their obsession with social media.
But last week, Hillel Ontario, working in partnership with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), inspired this all-too-often misrepresented generation to stand up and be a driving force in making provincial history. On December 1st, at Queen’s Park, the Ontario Legislature voted to pass a motion that affirms our government’s stance “against any position or movement that promotes or encourages any form of hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in any way.” Furthermore, the motion “rejects the differential treatment of Israel, including … [Read more...]

Dear Richard,
Firstly, I want to say thank you. As a volunteer and contributor to my local federation I am both aware and so thoroughly appreciative of the time and financial contribution that you have committed to the well being of the Jewish people. I also want to apologize, because I was one of the folks responsible for faxing thousands of petitions to the offices of JFNA and your firm just before Thanksgiving asking you not stand idly by while the President-elect appoints an individual who has empowered white nationalists as White House chief strategist and senior counselor.
We are not alone. One-third of the membership of the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations, along with local Jewish Federations and JCRCs representing a wide spectrum of sizes and geographic diversity, have … [Read more...]

By Douglas Bitonti Stewart
We usually think of scale as an escalator that moves in only one direction; up. Things start small and local and, if they succeed, they grow to be large and global.
Often, this model is correct. But focusing too narrowly on it might make us miss opportunities to scale in other ways. Sometimes, in fact, scale can work in reverse - by taking a global idea or model and giving it a new application on the local level.
In Detroit, I’m working with a small but growing group of philanthropists and professionals affiliated with the Jewish community who are demonstrating this principle by adapting a global model developed by the Jewish Funders Network for Jewish networked philanthropy. In the process, we’re discovering new ways to better understand and serve our local … [Read more...]

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